The advent of machines capable of producing pots of coffee utilizing a filter containing a quantity of ground coffee beans to which hot water can be fed, has revolutionized the art of coffee preparation and machines for this purpose have become wide-spread in the home and in restaurants and other institutions. In a home coffee machine of this type, a measured quantity of water is introduced into a reservoir and passes through a heater into a brewing compartment which may contain a replaceable, disposable filter and a measured quantity of coffee grounds. The coffee grounds, in accordance with the requirements of the user, generally are manually added to the filter from a can of regular coffee nondecaffeinated coffee or from a can of decaffeinated coffee.
Below the brewing compartment, generally on a heating plate, a carafe can be positioned to receive the brewed coffee. In some cases, the brewing compartment is mounted on the mouth of the carafe.
While such systems have been found to be suitable for the home or wherever relatively small amounts of the beverage are to be dispensed, these machines have not found widespread acceptability in restaurants and other institutional facilities which require machines capable of serving a larger number of patrons.
Accordingly, it is not uncommon for such a facility to have a coffee making machine in which a plurality of carafes are provided on respective hot plates or heaters and one or more carafes may be filled with hot water for tea, decaffeinated coffee and normal coffee, in readiness for service to the patrons, while a single coffee making station s provided on the machine having a brewing compartment of the type described having a replaceable filter which can be introduced into the machine and removed from the machine, for example, on a filter carrier. The latter can be filled with a measured amount of coffee grounds, once a filter has been inserted therein, e.g. in a separate station.
Such coffee makers have the drawback that they rely heavily upon manual intervention which is involved in all phases other than the brewing process, but can be connected directed to a water supply line so that they need not be filled manually with measured quantities of water. Manual intervention is required to introduce the coffee grounds which are to be employed. In addition, the versatility of such machines leaves much to be desired.
In a significant improvement of this type of apparatus, I have described in my U.S. Pat. No. 4,858,523, of which application Ser. No. 07/389,424 is a continuation-in-part, an automatic infusion beverage apparatus which greatly facilitates the automation of the coffee making process and can use prepackaged quantities of coffee grounds and respective filter units to which a distributor can selectively feed the hot water to produce the beverage.
The beverage is dispensed from a tank, for example.
In the improvement described in my copending application Ser. No. 07/389,424, these principles are extended to a system in which carafes can be individually filled with selected beverages brewed from a plurality of compartments.
Attention should also be directed to the rather complex coffee making machine described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,858,523 which has a source of coffee grounds, namely, a grinder associated herewith and thus does not require preparation of the grounds separately or manual measurement of the grounds which are to be used in making a quantity of the coffee.
In a still earlier U.S. Pat. No. 3,872,781, I have described an automatic coffee brewer which utilizes a plurality of brewing compartments.
Finally, reference should be made to U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,732,079, 4,583,449, 4,389,924, 4,200,039, 4,758,709, 4,725,714, 4,655,123 and 4,262,585 which detail a variety of systems for brewing the coffee, heating the water for such brewing and controlling the process.
By and large, while the art cited above discloses that it is known to provide a source of coffee grounds within the apparatus, e.g. a supply of coffee beans and a grinder, these earlier machines are relatively complex and do not fully satisfy the need for large volume coffee preparation and the specific needs of restaurants, short order facilities and other institutions supplying coffee to large numbers of consumers.